Thursday, 28 February 2013

#16: Seas Of Blood

SEAS OF BLOOD

Andrew Chapman

Reviewed by Mark Lain

Number 16 in
the original series is one of only two FFs where you get to play an out-and-out
baddie (along with Midnight Rogue
where you’re less bad and more just vaguely shady.) It is also one of only two
pirate-themed FFs ever released (the other being the many-years-in-limbo Bloodbones.) Andrew Chapman was fairly
prolific in the teens era of the series, giving us #12 Space Assassin, #15 The Rings Of Kether and this effort all in
very short succession. The quality of his output was sadly very inconsistent,
but there was a noticeable improvement from book to book: Space Assassin was terrible, The
Rings Of Kether was adequate, but Seas
Of Blood was actually really good. Perhaps Chapman realised this as at this
point he then stopped writing FFs for good (other than a co-writing credit in
the 2-player offering Clash Of The Princes.)
Incidentally, to avoid any awkward silences he didn’t die suddenly, I’ve
checked J

There is much
to relish in your portrayal of a pirate captain who has engaged in a wager with
his rival (the colourfully named Abdul The Butcher) to decide who is king of
the pirates (although that does awkwardly now remind me of Aardman’s The Pirates in An Adventure with Scientists,
which could reduce this book’s credibility slightly nowadays!) You both have a
limited time in which to sail around the Inland Sea, plundering, murdering and
robbing to gather as much gold and slaves as possible. Whoever has the most
when you reach the far end is the winner. So the premise is pretty simple
really, which works well and is a nice respite from the usual FF fare of either
assassinating a megalomaniac who’s threatening the world or going through some hideous
experience or other to acquire untold wealth and fame. To help accentuate the
difference between the individual YOU and the YOU that has a big ship and a
crew, two new stats (Crew Strike ie Skill and Crew Strength ie Stamina) are
introduced. New stats are always a mixed-bag but, unlike some other attempts at
crews (the dismal and unnecessarily long-winded effort in Starship Traveller springs to mind), this one is well-handled.
There are many skirmishes with other ships and/or bunches of people and,
although most of these are fairly difficult, you do get the feeling of a tough
inter-crew battle which is pretty accurate as you wouldn’t expect this to be
over in three dice rolls. You also can’t escape unless you win an Attack Round
(again, logical, as you’d collectively need the upper hand overall, rather than
it just being YOU that’s running off.) To add a sense of urgency there is a Log
feature as well where you keep track of how long you have been travelling for –
another logical inclusion as you are on a schedule here! If you exceed the
number of days agreed with Abdul you lose regardless (more good plot logic.) Some
extra rules have been added as well to deal with time being a healer and also
with strengthening your depleted crew. Capturing slaves increases your Crew
Strength and you personally can regain 1 point of lost Stamina per day of
travelling. Again, these are further logical inclusions and are, again, welcome.

Whilst the
fairly simple plot is executed effectively, there are a few issues that seem at
odds with the overall well thought-out construction:

·Primarily,
if you have been plying these seas and making a nuisance of yourself in them
for years how come a) you don’t seem to know what there is anywhere and b)
no-one seems to know who you are (or has everyone who ever met you ended up
dead)?

·Less
jarring, but also fairly evident is that there seems to be a time dilation
effect depending on which direction you go in or what verb is describing your
way of moving. For example, heading one way up a river takes ages, but going
the other is really fast (unless of course the current is incredibly strong in
one direction, maybe?) Likewise, “speeding” towards Nippur takes twice as long
as just generally going there!

·No
matter which direction you go in and how many times you zigzag across the
Inland Sea, you never seem to run into Abdul and his crew. What route exactly
does he take then? Is he watching where YOU go and deliberately going the other
way or something? Or does he just head straight for the really rich pickings
and then spend a few days R&R somewhere? It would be nice to be able to do
some taunting and even plunder each other along the way as that would really
add some extra urgency to the game.

·Occasionally,
there are some moments that just don’t seem to make sense, in particular an
assault on a monastery where you are made to change your mind about torching it
with flaming arrows only for your “over-zealous” (and presumably fairly
disobedient) crew to burn it down anyway destroying all its booty in the
process (or is this an admonishment for attacking a monastery?....er, which a
nasty pirate wouldn’t really be bothered about in moral terms) and a Roc’s nest
that seems to contain the entrance to a dungeon (that has no dead clumsy baby
Rocs in it that would presumably have slid into it at some point surely?)

Given the
subject matter (and the fact that pirates are presumably unwelcome in most
places), the difficulty level is fairly high in this book, both in the
combat/encounter sense and in the unpleasant instant deaths sense (and many of
them are pretty unpleasant.) There are c.40 instant death paragraphs in this
book, in other words 10% of it is trying to kill you! You are especially penalised
for exploring. Given that most FF players will want to take some risks and will
enjoy guessing what might be good and bad situations to get in, this book is
pretty harsh on bravery. Combat-wise, you will need a very high (11 or 12
preferably) Crew Strike to stand a chance in ship-to-ship combat situations
which is, unusually for the harder FFs, very suitable here as fighting other
pirates and trained navies is not going to be easy (most ships encountered have
Crew Strike 9 or 10.) The fact that some tough combats yield hardly any booty
adds to the difficulty and the fact that you need to choose wisely before engaging
other ships. There is even a point where you can literally find yourself in the
middle of a warzone which is very hard to escape from and, again, this really
does make sense. To add to the difficulty, the true path is very tight and
exploring often gets you nowhere as many diversions are exactly that –
diversions that send you on a wild goose chase up a river etc and gain you nothing.
As time is of the essence this could be another deliberate feature but it does
kind of take away the whole idea of an adventure. The real killer comes in a
triple-wammy at the end where you need to have four winds on your side,
followed by a hand-to-hand fight with a Cyclops and finally the discovery that
your (seemingly) huge amount of booty gets divided in half for the final
count-off with Abdul himself. In one way you can feel pretty cheated by this at
the end but, on the other hand, it does show you that you need to seek out the
true path and gather a vast amount of gold (800+ gps to be exact.)

Initially, it
appears that you have quite a variety of routes to take, which seems
interesting and varied, but multiple playing will show just how linear this adventure
really is and also just how much of it is pointless diversion and red herrings
(rather like House Of Hell.) This
means you can learn from replaying and gradually discover the optimum route so
there is lots of playability on offer here. Add to that the genuine satisfaction
gained from playing a baddie, some interesting side-missions, the general fun
of bataar racing (Steve Jackson would approve!) and this book’s (overall)
well-designed structure, and this makes for a generally really good FF.

There is one
real tour-de-force sequence in this book which is not well-written but is
brilliantly designed: the battle with the Cyclops. Rather than a straight FF
combat, you have to choose where to strike the Cyclops over numerous blows and
there is a real skill to it, rather than just slashing with your sword/rolling
the dice. This sequence covers around 30 paragraphs and is reminiscent of the
car chase in Chapman’s The Rings Of
Kether. Chapman seems very fond of these long set-pieces and should perhaps
have been a film director instead, as his ideas and execution are better than
his writing abilities.

Indeed, the only
real problems with this book are peripheral rather than any faults in the game
itself. Chapman’s writing is typically terse and, at times, lacking in colour
and detail. The atmosphere is created more from your being a pirate and the
premise of the game, rather than from the text, which is fairly barren in
places. Chapman’s snappy approach worked in The
Rings Of Kether as it added a hard-boiled aspect, whilst his frankly dull atmosphere-less
prose in FF#12 all but ruined Space
Assassin. In Seas Of Blood it
just about gets away with it as your attention is elsewhere. The endings are
genuine let-downs and make you wonder why you bothered turning to them –
whether you win or lose you only get two sentences that amount to little more than
either “You lose. Ha ha” or “You win. Hurrah.” (but actually phrased worse than
that!) The other big problem is Bob Harvey’s art which I really do not like.
Granted it is better here than in Talisman
Of Death, having a slightly sun-drenched “bright” feel to it that adds a Treasure Island­-ish effect, but it is
still too “Arabian Nights” in feel
and does not seem to be fantasy art. If anything, Harvey’s art looks more like
semi-serious history to me that detracts from the theme of this book. The cover
is far better and has real menace to it, even if a) the seas of blood
themselves aren’t red and b) the hydra is nowhere near that big when you meet
it. Incidentally, this and Robot Commando
both have the number and Fighting Fantasy
lettering in black on the cover instead of the usual white – I have no idea
why!

Overall I
really like this book and have played it many many times without ever getting
bored of it. Its strengths carry it through and do well to overcome its odd
parts and bad writing/artwork. Wizard Books haven’t re-issued any of Andrew
Chapman’s FFs, but this must surely be the one that most deserves a re-issue as
it is genuinely good.

5 comments:

b) no-one seems to know who you are (or has everyone who ever met you ended up dead)?

You can encounter at least three old acquaintances, depending on where you go. You owe one of them a lot of money, another wants to kill you because of how you wronged him in the past, and the third knocked out several of your teeth in a prizefight.

Bob Harvey is one of my favourite FF illustrators, although I often got him mixed up with Alan Langford, whom I also enjoy - those two should team up for a reptilian sea-faring adventure! Also, the seas are red(ish) on the cover I'd say.

"Incidentally, this and Robot Commando both have the number and Fighting Fantasy lettering in black on the cover instead of the usual white – I have no idea why!"

My SoB has gold writing on it, but yes it is black on RC. I recall buying a second copy of SoB somewhere because my first was from a charity shop and the front was 'artfully' all covered in tippex >:C

Well it's no surprise 'Space Assassin' and 'Rings Of Kether' are weaker than this-they're both sci-fi crap so clearly this book's the winner. FF stands for Fighting Fantasy, not Fighting effing Sc-Fi, so it's depressing that after a strong first bunch (9 out of the first 10 FF books are desirable-many brilliant-No.4 being the only entirely pointless one) the next 10 (No's 11-20) were a massively disappointing and treacherous treatment of us. Only 'Talisman', 'Temple', 'Demons Of The Deep', 'Sword Of The Smaurai' and this one (the weakest of all the proper ones) actually suffice as FF books-that's just half-and worse, 'Seas Of Blood' is enjoyably, despite its unique differing approach, only above average stock to equal 'Warlock'-ironically the least wow book of the first wave, though it's good for what it is, and as a beginning of the best series of gamebooks ever (discounting all non-fantasy titles).

With the pictures, they're pretty bad-not last the naffish Hydra, basic as hell and not even looking ANYTHING like the cover star. There's Jormangaundrs, Behemoths (it finally turned up in 'Bloodbones' decades later) and other sea beings to use, but they never did. The Cyclops battle is as clever as you say, but the Roc, the largest bird EVER should be given killer stats. It's written in the D&D manual as having wings 200 feet long and it CARRIES OFF SHIPS LITERALLY FOR NESTING MATERIAL-and presumably what crew that doesn't jump or fall out on the long flap back to its nest as a morning pick-me-up for itself and its babies. A ROC would be about SKILL 12 STAMINA 17, as regarding its size. It's also said they'd even view GIANTS as potential prey.

Can't agree with you on the drawings in the book being better than 'Talisman Of Death' which, despite a few ropey turns, delivers us far more fantasy beings than this book, which is all drawings of flipping frigates, galleons, flags and land outcroppings-the few creatures there are look pretty bad. The Roc isa bit of a joke compared to the one in 'Talisman', and the Lizard Men laughably cartoonic. To make matters worse, this book was followed by two more naff ones, until finally, the seas were treated properly in 'Demons' and then the 'Deathtrap' sequel kicked off the next 10 books with almost all winners, apart from silly 'Robot Commando', which should have been a proper fantasy one with Dinosaurs, pointles 'Star Strider' and the risible, pretentious, so mathematically absurd it can't be worked out 'Creature Of Havoc'. This was Steve's last book and what a dire way to leave. Still as annoying as it ever was, just working only as notes for his novels and a raft of cool pictures. HOORAY though for the 30s, which, disregarding 'Sky Lord' (more Why Lord?) and the boring as bordeom's most bored FF book 'Slaves Of The Abyss'-which the 10 books later 'Black Vein Prophecy' will match (at least 'Creature Of Havoc' HAD battles, creatures, just never went anywhere, achieved anything), we got SIX-SIX pretty perfects ones in a row from No.36 from Livingstone himself through to 'Master Of Chaos'. Sadly this is where my collection starts to slide, with many titles as yet still to get, yet financially out of reach at the moment when available, though dreadful errors seem rumoured to pop up from there. Editors all get Harpoon Flied or something. Or picnic on Sleeping Grass?

My only strong memory of reading this book as a lad was the fantastic unarmed fight with the Cyclops. Definitely the highlight if you ask me and killed me several times. I'm really happy to have discovered this blog; have had some very entertaining reads in the light of reading Port of Peril over the last week or so.